Robert Crews (15 page)

The mallards began to wrestle, duck-fashion. The drake, with much flapping of wings, leaped onto the hen's dun back, forcing her under the surface of the pond. Hey, was that fair? The male was no larger in size, but his iridescent blue-green head and aggressive manner made him seem the bully, especially insofar as the female accepted the brutalization, her head going submissively under the water as her back accepted his weight. It took him a while to recognize that the ducks were not fighting but copulating. He was a fool to sit there and starve when they were within range of his bow and in a vulnerable state.

Man lives only by killing something regularly, be it a plant. He would probably miss both ducks, given his equipment and technique. If he hit the more conspicuous, the hen would only be a widow but he would have a much-needed meal, the first since the day before, and he was a unique human being, whereas a mallard was just a bird, easily replicated: in fact, that was what they were doing as he watched, reproducing their own kind, something he had managed to avoid throughout three successive marriages.

But by the time he had surreptitiously begun to fit an arrow to the string, keeping the bow flat against the ground till he was ready to raise it, the ducks had finished their coupling, the drake being no Crews, who in his heyday, even with all that drinking, could withhold his climax until his partner had more than one: his sole talent as husband, which when gone left him resourceless. As the mallards had not cuddled before, they did not do so after the encounter, but paddled about separately, the hen modest as ever, the male with what might be seen, anthropomorphically, as a new smugness, handsome sleek head at an arrogant angle, yellow beak cocked—but in a moment this attitude proved rather preparation for a new encounter than gloating on a past triumph.

Another male mallard had come out of the air to set down on the water, halfway across the pond. It was he for whom the first drake now headed, unknowingly saving himself from being a target for an arrow, which might not have struck its mark but was finally ready to be launched from the raised bow.

Just as Crews had not immediately recognized that the grappling between the male and the female was sexual, he was now slow to see that the two drakes were about the meet in combat. He was also distracted by the moral dilemma of which bird to shoot at first. The hen was an obvious target, being much nearer him and at the moment static in the water. But though ravenous he still had scruples with respect to the sex that produces offspring. In this case she could be presumed pregnant. In another moment, her mate, swimming rapidly toward the newcomer, was out of the effective range of Crews's poor weapon even if accurately launched. Regretfully, he sighted on the hen and pulled the bowstring back….

The first drake leaped onto the back of the other, much as when servicing the hen, but this victim was not so serviceable. It struggled, fluttered, and writhed, but its head was restrained by the attacker's beak, clamped into its blue-green throat, and then forced under the surface and kept there by the upper bird, kicking furiously with spatulate orange feet, to increase the downward pressure.

Crews was arrested by the spectacle, he who had himself been in so many fights but none of them over a female—at least never on his part, though it was possible that some of his opponents had been avenging an insult to wife or girlfriend. With
him
what had always been at stake was “honor,” not the genuine article, which of course could hardly be defended dishonorably. Wild animals were innocent of such abstractions. One drake attacked another for a motive at once deeper in the blood while more superficial in mind, if indeed ducks had minds. They ate whenever they could find food and mated only when their hormones told them to, and drove off rivals, probably in some instinctive obedience to a law of natural selection. He did not believe the loser in this conflict would die. Was it not a fact that only human beings and rats killed their own kind? No, that was applicable only to war, between armies.

The fact here was that the underduck was killed by the upper after a very short battle, in which all the savagery was exclusive to him who had lately mated, and who, having discharged another of the functions assigned him by the inscrutable God that made and maintained him, swam robustly back to the vicinity of the hen, emitting quacks that were voluble but not loud, but whether or not in triumph Crews could not judge. The longer he tried to cope with nature the more he necessarily learned, but the less he understood in human terms, which might even be an encumbrance.

In any event, he received a windfall. The dead mallard's body was floating in the middle of the pond. Crews had gotten his dinner without firing the arrow, which would probably have missed. He dropped the bow and raised himself from his long-held crouch. At this threat the living ducks lunged into the air and desperately winged away. Having so often endured wet clothing since coming to the wilderness, he went to the lean-to and stripped to his drawers, hanging the garments nicely on one of the projecting roof members. When he returned to the pond, a large black crow, in mortician's swallowtail, was riding the body of the floating dead duck, dissecting its belly with a beak that served first as scalpel, then as hinged utensil with which to pull out and gobble up spaghetti strings of wet red guts.

“The hell you do!”
Crews shouted in fury, his voice in this use sounding even to himself like a deafening feral roar, and plunged into the water. At this moment he would have charged an eagle. The noise alone routed the crow, which did not wait for the arrival of the naked ape but lifted itself effortlessly to a branch of the nearest tree on the far side of the pond, from which it complained raucously at the theft of its meal—impotently, for Crews, bigger and stronger and smarter, and therefore more deserving, claimed the now gory prize and swam back with it.

He started a fire, burned off such feathers as he could and skinned the duck where he could not, spitted the blackened and somewhat mangled bird on a green stick, and roasted it over flames that leaped and flared when fed by the abundant dripping fat. The result was partially charred and elsewhere raw, like most of his open-fire cookery thus far, but generally glorious, and he ate everything but the bones and cartilage, which he flung to the crow, who had stayed around all this while, cawing sometimes and often changing perches, finally coming to a tree on Crews's side of the water, from which it peered down at him, anxiously shifting its claws.

Michelle on occasion brought home frozen dinners from the menu served in first class. There were some passengers who ate nothing even on overseas flights, as Crews himself could testify, being of their company, and nobody seemed to care what disposition was made of the surplus meals. The wines, however, were policed, being of quite a higher order than the food, despite the grand claims made for the latter, supposedly the creation of the celebrity chef whose face was exploited in the ads. The duck, for example, seemed to have been basted with an ammonia-flavored marmalade. It was garnished with potato puffs too often taken from heat to cold and back again, slimy infant green beans, and inedible “roses” coiled from tomato peelings.

But never that concerned with food, they had fun anyway. Michelle was Crews's favorite among his wives, and not just for her remarkable body, which never showed a hint of her remarkable abuse of it. One of his great pleasures was simply to lie in bed and watch her wander around the apartment in the nude, often aimlessly, seldom with any immediate awareness of her state. This was true even at those rare times when she had lately smoked or sniffed something. She was also the most generous human being he had ever known. At first he had, in admitted bias, associated this attribute with stupidity, but Michelle did not lack in intelligence: it was rather a matter of attention. Hers was often elsewhere than where the moment would seem to demand. But where? Sometimes brooding on the question made him furious, but as much with himself as with her, and one thing that could not be done with Michelle was to quarrel. She began by granting the validity of all differences of opinion and was by nature incapable of an Ardis-style of opposition.
If you want to believe that, go ahead
. It was simply never the sort of thing she took seriously. What then was worthwhile? Holidays, public and private, some made up on the spot, such as the first day of sun in an otherwise wet week. She needed no champagne to make the occasion effervescent. Gifts, for which she had a genius. The expensive ones, of precious metals or rare skins, were inconspicuous; but the cheap ones, the jokes, were loud and gaudy: blow-up dolls, goofy paper animal masks, carnival hats from far-flung places. And sometimes she brought back a one-of-a-kind present that enchanted Crews, e.g., the belt from Istanbul which when you pulled the buckle from the leather sheath revealed the flexible blade of a steel so thin and elastic that it became a sword when not encircling a waistline. Judging from what, later on when he was in need, he got for it from an antiques dealer as notoriously mean when buying as greedy when selling, she must have spent several months' salary on this alone, and with what went for drugs, Michelle could rightly never spare a dime.

Crews, who always stuck to alcohol with the to him compelling argument that it was properly a food, of which he might be temporarily a glutton but from which he could at any time return to moderation, was drunkenly late in recognizing that she had a problem, but even when he did so he believed her addiction, by exceeding, excused his own.

The crow had carried quite a large hunk of duck carcass to a high branch, where, one foot clamped on its meal, it plucked and devoured such minuscule morsels of meat as were left. It continued from time to time to caw, though perhaps in satisfaction now. Most nonhuman animals had but a narrow range of voice in which to make their barbaric yawps. Crews could call himself only semiarticulate when it came to women: another way in which he was no chip off the old block. His father had been overweight and bald, yet could with a few words seemingly enchant any female in whose presence his son had ever observed him, despite losing no time in betraying any to whom he became close and letting them
know:
that was essential to his satisfaction.

Crews had begun to notice that his reminiscences, which necessarily tended toward the lamentable, invariably came to mind only at those times when his current existence became more rewarding—if gnawing the half-burned, half-raw corpse of a wild duck could be so called, but of course it could, according to the law of prevailing conditions, a clause in the general rule of survival, which made standard the practice of eating that which did not eat you. So long as you kept living, you were damned right to feel satisfaction. Crews cawed back at the crow, who was sufficiently startled to stop pecking bones and to gawk.

He got back to work, the moral value of which he could at last appreciate, for nothing else so keeps one from fleeing the moment at hand, the only one that can ever be used. The sandals had not been successful, but the theory thereof had by no means been repudiated. Better materials must be found. And now that the possibility that the farther reaches of the lake might be explored with profit had suggested the construction of a raft, he had a lot to do.

But heavy rain all the next day not only postponed work on the raft but also reminded him, huddling therein, that the lean-to left much to be desired as shelter from wind-driven water, which came in from any of the three open sides it willfully chose, and even through the spaces between the logs of the roof-wall. A reliable raft would take a while to build, and meanwhile there was always the matter of food. He would need his house for some time; it should be improved.

The next day was dry. He gathered enough of the smaller fallen trees, the beavers' leftovers, to form the other half of the roof, making the former lean-to into a tent-shaped hut, or a pup tent constructed of wood, for it was only three and a half feet high at the ridgepole and had to be entered on hands and knees. He closed in one of its ends, and for the other lashed together a panel that, when hung on hinges made from the thick, rubber-insulated wire from his otherwise useless electric razor, formed a door. The many interstices of the door would admit some rain and much wind, but had a function as peepholes from which to take the lie of the land before emerging.

He plastered all the chinks in the other three surfaces of his home with clay from the invaluable deposit near the pond, doing this while the logs were still damp from the rains, so that when the clay dried it would not shrink too much as the wood thirstily absorbed its moisture. Memories that had practical value to him were now returning from childhood, when, as an only child at the country house, he was wont to frequent the workingmen who came to do repairs, such as the stone-mason who assured him it was advisable to wet well all materials that came in contact with fresh concrete.

What with the hut and a fishing expedition so successful that he prolonged it, bringing back enough trout to sustain him for a while, several days passed before Crews could deal with the matter of the raft. When he did get to it, the problem was soon evident. A platform sufficiently substantial to remain buoyant under his weight would be too wide to be floated down the narrow stream. But if the assembled product would likely be too large for the stream, you could send the logs down, one or more at a time, and when enough had been transferred, build the raft on the very shore of the lake, or even in the shallow water, where the heaviness of the members would not be a hindrance.

He set to work, rolling to the brook such ready-cut logs as remained and then sending them afloat downstream. He accompanied every consignment, a job that took hours, for the lake was at least half a mile from the pond, and despite his shepherding, the logs tended at places to get turned crosswise and hang up on projecting rocks or roots along the narrow waterway, and then for the earliest trips he had to plow a path for himself through virgin terrain, trampling down some vegetation but being forced to evade that too dense or bristling with thorns.